Kitabı oku: «Pastures New»

CHAPTER ONE

‘There’s a fire on the anti-clockwise section of the M25, just before the junction with the M1, and the traffic’s backing up to junction 26, so do avoid that if you can …’

Hopefully that will have cleared by the time I get back, thought Amy, as Sally Traffic made way for a debate about gun crime. She’d always hated driving on the motorway, and never more so than now, when she had to do it alone.

Oh Jamie, I miss you so much …

The thought came unbidden and unprompted, and she blinked back the sudden tears.

This would never do.

Pull yourself together, girl, Amy admonished herself sternly, straightening her slight shoulders and gripping the steering wheel tighter. If she really was going to make this move, she had to be strong. She had to. Hold on to that thought …

At least it was a gloriously sunny day, and the soft undulating Essex countryside was looking its best. Field after field of sun-drenched corn. Thanks to the rotten summer, the harvest was late, but here and there bales of hay indicated that it was finally underway. And the smell of burning stubble was a reminder that summer really was drawing in. Constable country, Amy thought to herself. She wouldn’t be surprised to find a haywain round the next corner.

The journey from North London had taken much longer than she had envisaged, but eventually Amy found herself driving over the little humpbacked bridge that, according to her map, marked the boundary between the Essex and Suffolk sides of the pretty market town of Nevermorewell. A feeling of excitement grew in her as she pulled the car into the picturesque high street, dwarfed by a large Norman church, and flanked on either side by tiny quaint shops with mock Tudor cladding. It was perfect. Just what she was looking for.

Amy pulled into a parking place – amazingly there were several empty ones. So different from Barnet, where she would have been driving around fruitlessly for hours before finding a spot miles away from home. That had to be a good omen.

She took a deep breath and stared at herself in the rear-view mirror. She teased out her fair curls so they didn’t look quite so tangled, and put on a bit of lippy – bright red to boost her confidence. She rarely wore makeup – Jamie had always said her light natural complexion didn’t need any, and now she didn’t see the point. But lippy was good. Lippy was part of the mask she needed to face each day. The mask she needed right now to persuade Josh of the wisdom of this move. It didn’t help that she was so racked with guilt about it, that she wasn’t one hundred per cent convinced herself.

‘Right, Josh,’ she smiled brightly at her five-year-old son, who was sucking his thumb and looking out of the window. ‘We’re here. And we’re going to look at some new houses for us. Isn’t that fun?’

‘Is Granny coming too?’ asked Josh.

‘No, sweetheart,’ said Amy. ‘You remember, I told you. Granny’s staying in her house, and we’re going to have a new house. Won’t that be nice?’

‘Oh,’ said Josh, his face puckering a little. ‘But we won’t see Granny very much, will we?’

‘No, but she can come and visit any time she likes,’ said Amy, more brightly than she felt. Damn. She thought she’d squared that with him. But then, he was very close to Mary, it was only natural he would feel the loss of her.

And she of him. Amy’s stomach went into spasm as she recalled the conversation she’d had with her mother-in-law a few weeks earlier.

‘So you’re serious about this move then?’

As Amy was in the middle of packing up a pile of books at the time, it was hard to resist a sarcastic remark, but she bit her lip and said, ‘Yes, Mary, I am.’

‘What about Josh?’ Mary had sniffed. ‘He’s not going to know anyone in the country.’

‘Children are very adaptable,’ Amy had snapped back. Mary had touched a nerve, as it was what Amy herself had agonised about over and over again.

‘That may be so,’ Mary had replied flatly, ‘but it’s such a long way.’

‘I know,’ Amy had said. ‘And I’m sorry.’

‘But that’s not going to stop you, is it?’ The comment had been barbed, and hit home as it was intended to. Amy had flinched, but held firm.

‘No, Mary, it’s not,’ she’d replied, wishing beyond all measure that there was an easy way of doing this, an easy way of creating some distance from her memories.

Sighing, she got Josh out of the car, and peered down at the map the estate agents had given her. According to it, their office should be on the corner.

‘Come on, Josh,’ she said, taking his hand, ‘it’s this way.’

They were just coming up to a little cartway when Josh let go of Amy’s hand.

‘Hey, cool!’ he said, running towards the toy shop on the other side to look at the Spiderman poster in the window.

‘Josh! Come back!’ shouted Amy.

At that moment a motorbike came roaring up the cartway.

‘Josh!’ screamed Amy.

The motorbike braked and swerved, the rider just about avoiding Josh and retaining control.

‘Josh, are you okay?’ Amy ran to her son and took him in her arms, trembling violently. ‘You never, ever run off like that again, do you hear?’

Josh burst into tears – whether because of the telling-off or the fright he had had, Amy wasn’t sure. But he was all right. She took a deep breath. That was all that mattered.

‘Just what the hell did you think you were doing?’ she screamed at the rider, fear turning to fury.

‘I could say the same thing about you,’ spat out the rider, taking off his helmet to reveal dark hair, brown eyes and a strong, chiselled face, which would have been stern if it were not lightened by a ready smile. ‘Your son ran across the road.’

‘You were going too fast.’ Amy’s tone was accusing.

‘I was doing less than twenty,’ replied the rider. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to stop.’

They glared at each other.

‘Is your son okay?’ The rider glanced at Josh, who was squirming out of Amy’s grasp.

‘No thanks to you,’ snapped Amy.

‘I’m sorry to have given you a fright,’ said the rider. ‘And I’m glad your son is all right, really I am. But you shouldn’t let him run off like that.’

Amy couldn’t speak. This stranger was right. Her moment of inattention had nearly got her son killed. She nodded mutely. Tears pricked her eyes. What if the bike had been going faster? She would have lost Josh as well as Jamie.

As if sensing her change of mood, the rider gently said, ‘Look, no harm done, eh?’ He squatted down next to Josh, and added, ‘Hey, tiger, you make sure you hold your mum’s hand really tight when you cross the road next time. You promise?’

‘I promise,’ mumbled Josh.

The rider got up, climbed back on his bike, and roared off up the road.

‘Who was that man, Mummy?’ Josh asked.

‘No one,’ said Amy, as she watched the departing bike, wondering why a stranger’s moment of kindness had made her feel so lonely. ‘Come on,’ she said, rallying herself. ‘Let’s go and find our new home.’

‘And this is the garden …’ The estate agent motioned Amy towards the rickety wooden door leading from the kitchen. Josh, who had been trailing behind them, immediately perked up and pushed his way forwards. Amy took a deep breath. It was still going to be a tough call selling Josh this move, and so far he had been deeply unimpressed, but a garden might just swing it. The shared patch of earth that passed for a garden in their two-bedroom flat in Barnet didn’t amount to much, and Josh was desperate to have somewhere to kick a ball.

‘It’s stuck,’ Josh said, disappointed. The door seemed to have swollen from the recent rain and was rather stiff.

‘Here, let me.’ The estate agent, whom Amy had silently christened Smarmy Simon, had a go. He really had to tug it, but eventually, with a rather worrying rattle, the door opened and they all trooped outside.

Amy knew she should be concerned about details like that. Jamie would have been making a list by now of all the things that were wrong with the place. But she couldn’t – not with the tingling feeling of excitement that had been growing inside her as Smarmy Simon showed her round. It was a long time since she had felt that mixture of hope and anticipation.

The house was perfect. It could have been made for her and Josh. A Victorian terrace, full of character as requested. Three bedrooms, so more than enough room for the pair of them. The downstairs wasn’t huge, and the bathroom was inconveniently next door to the kitchen, as was the case in all these old terraces, but it didn’t matter. There were marble fireplaces, and real wood floors. The kitchen was oak throughout. It was quaint. Even the little archway that joined the house onto its neighbour was attractive. Like the rest of the house, it had charm. It was the house she and Jamie had always dreamed of.

Don’t go there, she admonished herself, reciting the mantra that she had long since perfected to retain her sanity as she emerged into the sunlit garden. It was a bit overgrown, but someone had evidently tended it well in the past. Amy spotted lobelia tumbling out of a couple of cracked earthenware pots, and down one side of a whitewashed wall the honeysuckle was going wild, though beginning to look a little past its sell-by date. There were marigolds in the flowerbeds – self-sown, probably, as it didn’t look as though anyone had planted bedding plants there for a while. They were nestled with wild poppies and nasturtiums. It was beautiful, and Amy longed to start work on it immediately.

‘If you’ll notice, at the end of the garden,’ Smarmy Simon was saying, ‘there’s a gate that leads onto the allotments. I believe the owner still pays rent on hers, and if you were interested she probably wouldn’t have any objection to you using it.’

‘May I?’ Amy asked, pointing at the gate.

‘Oh, yes, of course,’ said Smarmy Simon. ‘It’s open. No one bothers to lock things much around here.’ His phone started to ring. ‘Will you excuse me for a minute?’ He answered it while waving her on down the path.

As Amy opened the gate, she had to restrain herself from letting rip to whoops of delight. Josh ran round and round in excited circles, shouting loudly. Amy tried to shush him – there didn’t appear to be any other children on the allotments, and she didn’t want to irritate people – but his enthusiasm was infectious. It was perfect, absolutely perfect.

From the road, she would have had no idea this was here. The allotments spread out before her, a tiny green oasis in the middle of a small but busy market town. They were alive with the sound of birdsong, and looked well cared for. Presently, being the middle of the day, they were mainly empty. She heard the sound of a mower in the distance, and was startled by the appearance of a rather hairy-looking man, dressed in black leather, who appeared to be talking to something in a bucket.

‘There you are, me beauties,’ he was muttering, ‘have I got a treat for you.’

Passing by his plot, a ramshackle affair with gnarled fruit trees protected by netting, and strange wooden contraptions that Amy supposed were homemade compost heaps, she and Josh wandered down a wide path. This was glorious, quite glorious.

She could see another man pausing from digging up vegetables on one of the other plots. A black Labrador sat at his side, panting in the midday sun. The man had obviously been exerting himself – he had taken his shirt off, and was swigging some water. There was something vaguely familiar about him. He leaned on his spade for a moment, before returning to his digging. Amy turned away.

This place, it was wonderful. When she had seen the details of the house Amy had had no idea it backed onto allotments, and it was the icing on the cake. She squinted in the sun, taking in the beauty of her surroundings. There were blackberries ripening in the late August sunshine, and beans, tomatoes and potatoes all coming into fruition. The odd hut was dotted about, and some plots seemed to consist of fruit trees. It had been a poor summer – today was one of the few hot days they’d had – but the trees seemed laden with fruit anyway. There was a sense of abundance, and ripeness – the time for harvesting near. Amy couldn’t help the catch in her throat, as she thought about how much Jamie would have loved this. Autumn had always been his favourite time of year – a golden time to catch his golden girl he had used to tease her. They had met in the autumn, nearly fourteen years ago, the early days of their courtship punctuated with long country walks crunching their way through leaf-strewn fields. If they had only been able to do this together.

Together. They would never do anything together again. A hard, familiar knot tightened in her stomach. It was nearly two years ago now, but the thought of never seeing Jamie again was still enough to take her breath away. She had promised herself she would be strong for Josh, but it took all her self-control not to let out the raw pain, which she concealed so well these days. She was determined to leave all that behind her. This was a new start for her and Josh. A new beginning, a way forward to slough off the pain of the past.

She took a deep breath and stared around her once again. She and Jamie had always dreamed of decamping to the countryside and living in an old farmhouse. A memory forced its way into her mind – a snapshot of a perfect day on a long weekend, not far from here, a sunny day in late summer, much like this, visiting Amy’s Auntie Grace in Aldeburgh.

Jamie strode ahead of her through fields of golden corn, with Josh on his back. The sun shone, but the air was crisp and bracing, a fresh wind coming from the sea.

‘Isn’t this perfect?’ Jamie shouted into the wind as it whipped his hair, his eyes alight with laughter.

‘We should come and live here,’ Amy said from behind a camera, taking a photo to capture the moment.

‘We’d need a big house,’ Jamie said. ‘For all of Josh’s brothers and sisters.’

‘And a big garden,’ Amy laughed. ‘With a vegetable patch.’

‘And we’d have to have a dog.’

‘We could keep chickens,’ offered Amy.

‘I’d rather have a goat,’ replied Jamie with a smile.

‘Now you’re just being silly.’ Amy punched him on the shoulder, and he grabbed her hands and pulled her to him.

‘Still, it would be nice,’ she said.

‘Wouldn’t it just,’ said Jamie, kissing her. ‘One day, I promise you, one day …’

It was the photo from that day, which she still kept beside the bed, that had made her determined to make this move. In the early days, when she had cried herself to sleep every night, she could hardly bear to look at it. But of late, she had found the picture comforting. As if he were still with her, somehow. She couldn’t live the dream with Jamie, but maybe she could do it for him.

Amy had havered for months before taking the plunge. It was Auntie Grace who finally proved the catalyst. Actually a great-aunt, Auntie Grace had lived grumpily alone for many years in the depths of Suffolk. She wasn’t an easy person, but Amy didn’t have much family, so she had dutifully visited from time to time, though admittedly after Jamie had died, when every day had been such a trial, just getting up was difficult on some days, so the visits had tailed off. On the last occasion, a year ago, Grace had fixed her with a beady eye, and said, ‘It seems tough now, you know, but it will get better. Remember my motto: Always look forward. Never back.’

Amy had taken no notice of her at the time, but when, after Grace’s not unexpected demise at the age of eighty-nine several months earlier, she learned that her aunt had left her a considerable sum of money, it seemed like a sign. Jamie had died so suddenly, so young, he had left no will, and Amy had struggled to keep up with the mortgage payments ever since. Mary had been fantastic, prepared to babysit Josh at the drop of a hat, helping out so Amy didn’t have to pay childcare fees for the whole week, pushing Amy to carry on with the gardening course she had started before Jamie’s death, coming to the rescue when money was especially tight. Amy owed her a huge debt, both financial and emotional. Guilt flared in her chest once more at depriving Mary of Josh.

But now, fortunately, she had enough money to pay off the debts Jamie had left behind and even have some left over. Amy had finished her course, and she could actually afford to stop teaching and forge out a new career as she had always planned to do when Jamie was alive. Maybe it was time to look forward and not back. Living round the corner from Mary, whose grief had taken the form of a kind of suffocating blanket covering both Amy and Josh, she’d never be able to do that. Besides, she and Jamie had always talked of coming out this way. If only she could persuade Mary it was the right thing for them to do.

Apart from her brother Danny, who lived in Surrey, and Auntie Grace, Jamie and Mary had been her only family for years now. Her own mother had moved to the States when Amy was at college, and she and Danny had no idea where their father was. Amy’s parents had split up when she was fourteen. Her dad had just walked out one day, and though she and Danny had tried over the years to contact him, their efforts had been in vain. They’d both given up now. Although Amy and her mother Jennifer had never been close they had always stayed in touch, but Jennifer had remarried. Amy had long held the suspicion that her mum’s demanding new husband, who had several children of his own, allowed her little room for her own offspring. It hadn’t seemed to matter when Amy had had Jamie. He’d been all the family she needed.

Mary had been like a second mother to her – particularly since she had lost Jamie. Leaving her was going to be much harder than Amy had thought, and not just because of Josh.

Mary had made her displeasure so blatant that Amy still felt churned up about the decision she was making. What if she had got it wrong? But then again, what if she stayed and did nothing? Amy knew she was stifled where she was. She was frightened if she didn’t seize this moment to make some changes in her life, she never would.

‘And I’m doing it for you, Jamie,’ she vowed silently. ‘Josh and I will do this for you.’

Josh. A minute ago, he was playing at her side, and now he was nowhere to be seen. Where was he? Amy knew she could be neurotic about Josh, but after the fright he’d given her that morning she wasn’t taking any chances. What if the hairy man she’d seen as she entered the allotments was some kind of weirdo? Then Amy heard the sound of a child yelling, followed by a dog barking. She started to run.

Ben was digging up spuds on the allotment. He always came here after surgery on a Friday, when he had the afternoon off. Particularly if it had been a bad morning. And today had been one hell of a morning. He had been running late for the whole of the session, and there seemed to be more than the usual number of timewasters bemoaning their lot. Sometimes he wondered if he was really cut out for this job. Doling out Prozac like Smarties and treating little old ladies’ verrucas hadn’t really been what he was thinking of when he’d decided to be a doctor all those years ago. And the only important thing he had had to do all day – find someone at his local Primary Care Trust prepared to give one of his MS patients a brand-new drug that was meant to work wonders – had met with a blank wall. If Ben’s patient, a seventy-year-old man, had lived in Essex, there wouldn’t have been a problem. But the postcode lottery of living in Suffolk meant that the patient’s particular PCT weren’t yet giving the drug out. Ben had had the unpleasant task of explaining the inexplicable to the poor man’s wife, who kept saying, ‘But Jane Merchant’s husband gets it, I don’t understand.’ Ben didn’t either. Sometimes this job made you want to weep.

Not only that, he had nearly run over a kid on the way home from work. He hadn’t been going fast, and the kid had run out in front of him – but still. Inevitably, he thought about Sarah, and as a result he had been more angry with the kid’s mum than he should have been. But then – there had been something about her that touched him. An air of vulnerability that had made him want to protect her. He shook his head. He’d clearly been on his own too long. Perhaps Caroline was right, and he should have chucked it all in for a while and gone travelling with her.

Caroline. Despite his best intentions his thoughts still strayed back to Caroline. Enchanting, infuriating, mercurial Caroline. Why had he let himself get involved with her again? He’d known it would lead to trouble. But it had been hard letting go of the only person he’d ever really talked to about Sarah. Harder than he’d let on to anyone. It was the sympathetic way Caroline had listened when he’d first opened up to her about Sarah that blinded him to her faults in the first place. Caroline seemed to show such intuitive understanding, and when she’d cried about the day her father had left, it seemed their shared pain had given them a lasting bond. However, it hadn’t taken Ben long to realise that although Caroline did genuinely believe herself to be caring and thoughtful, in reality she was too selfish and spoilt to think too hard about anyone but herself.

To a degree, Ben didn’t blame her – her mother had remarried a rich banker, and while Caroline had never wanted for anything materially, her mother and step-father’s lack of emotional support meant she was appallingly needy. Caroline’s response, when she and Ben had split up, had been to flaunt a variety of different men in Ben’s face. To his eternal shame, the ploy had worked, and when she’d announced that she was leaving, he’d found himself back at her place on more than one occasion. He always regretted it, but Caroline just had a way of getting to him.

It had been a great relief when she’d finally gone off travelling, presuming he would follow her. But Ben had just taken up a temporary contract working in practice, and after spending too long kidding himself he was going to be a surgeon he couldn’t afford to lose time now if he was going to make partner in the next few years.

Ben had thought that would be the last he’d hear of Caroline, but a succession of emails meant he was fully apprised of her doings. He had received one this morning, which annoyingly had caused a reaction he really thought he’d got beyond by now.

She was working in a bar in California, having a great time. Too busy to write much, she said. Must dash, C U! And then a casual PS: Attached are some photos of me and Dave behind the bar. There were some jpeg attachments, and he opened them to see photo after photo of Caroline with a tall, brawny bloke who had a deep tan – presumably Dave Behind the Bar.

He knew why she’d sent them. It was to make him jealous. She had always flirted with other people when they’d been together. It was one of the many things about her that had made Ben realise he had to walk away. DBtB was probably nothing to Caroline, and she had only sent the picture to get a reaction. He hated himself for having it.

He dug furiously, trying to shake off unwanted images. He didn’t want Caroline any more. If she were here now, she would drive him mad. The trouble was that Caroline, for all her faults, her selfishness and her ego, was also bewitching and dazzling by degrees. And pathetic as he was, he couldn’t quite get her out from under his skin.

Ben vented his frustration on the ground and dug even harder, while Meg, his black Labrador, sat beside him, panting softly in the late summer heat. It was one of the hottest days of the year so far. Ben stripped off his shirt, and used it to mop his brow. He took a swig of water, and glanced, out of habit as much as anything else, towards Caroline’s garden gate. How many times had he seen her emerge from there, spade in hand, wearing her old gumboots and dressed casually in jeans and T-shirt, effortlessly managing to combine a wild sensuality with an earthy practicality? It was an image that was never far from his thoughts when he came out here.

He was about to turn back to his digging again when the garden gate opened. For a moment his heart leapt – maybe? – before his head kicked in. Caroline was unpredictable, it was true, but even she couldn’t make it back from California in under twenty-four hours. Maybe her rather useless letting agents had rented the place at last.

It wasn’t her. But it was a woman. And an attractive one at that. Her long fair curls tumbled casually over her shoulders. She was slim and wore a plain strappy summer dress and flat sandals. She had a little boy with her. It was the woman from this morning; the woman whose son he had nearly knocked over. Perhaps they were going to move in. He shook his head. He returned to his digging and dismissed them from his mind.

About ten minutes later, he became aware of a rather insistent and annoying buzzing sound. He turned round and suddenly he heard a shout of, ‘Wheee! I’m an aeroplane!’ and a small bundle came flying over, stamping on his carrots and crashing into his runner-bean frame. Meg leapt up and started barking wildly, and the bundle burst into tears.

‘Bloody hell! Can’t you control your son?’

Really! This kid had got in his way twice in one morning. His mother clearly had no authority.

‘He’s only a kid!’ The woman came flying up in a fury. She knelt down and took the bundle of child into her arms, making soothing noises.

‘Then I suggest you take better care of him!’ Ben was still cross, but also a little embarrassed that he might have overreacted.

‘And I suggest you keep your animal under control,’ the woman shouted back, pointing at Meg, who was jumping up and down, still barking excitedly. ‘Josh is terrified of dogs.’

‘If your son hadn’t been trampling over my allotment Meg wouldn’t have barked at all. This isn’t a playground!’

‘I am aware of that,’ the woman retorted in stiff tones. She looked pretty when she was cross, Ben casually thought. ‘I’m sorry that my son trampled on your allotment. He was just playing.’

‘Is he okay?’ Ben felt guilty. The little boy couldn’t be more than five.

The woman looked at him in disgust. ‘He’ll be fine, no thanks to your dog.’

They glared at each other angrily for a moment, Ben furious with her for not taking the olive branch he’d offered.

‘’I think we’ve seen quite enough of each other today. It’s all right, we won’t trouble you any further,’ she said, and walked away.

‘Good!’ retorted Ben, sticking his spade into the ground in disgust, watching her walk back towards Caroline’s house.

Just at that moment, Harry Hartswood emerged from the garden next door, pushing a wheelbarrow containing a spade, a fork and some potato sacks. Harry’s allotment was next-but-one to Ben’s, and they were old friends, their friendship forged by a shared love of growing things, an interest in history and a fascination on Ben’s part with Harry’s plethora of war stories.